Acer Predator 15 (2016, GTX 1060) Review

Table of Contents

Introduction, Design & Features

Acer has been slowly but steadily building a reputation for gaming machines since its first Predator-branded desktop landed in 2008. (On that front, we most recently reviewed the Acer Predator G1 small form factor tower.)

It seemed like it took forever, but Acer finally added a Predator notebook to its lineup in 2015. As we found when we reviewed the first-generation Predator 15, it was worth the wait. That’s not to say Acer was brand-new to the gaming-notebook scene. The company had been producing high-performance models in its Aspire lineup for some time, such as the Aspire V 15 Nitro we reviewed in early 2015. But as a bold shift in design to appeal to serious gamers, the company's Predator laptops have been impressive.

The refreshed Predator 15 we're reviewing here shares the basic physical design and some core specs with the 2015 model. The biggest difference between the two is the replacement of the outgoing Nvidia GeForce GTX 900 series "Maxwell" graphics with the GTX 10-series "Pascal" chips.

The notebook we're looking at here features GeForce GTX 1060 graphics, the least-potent graphics chip currently offered in Nvidia's mobile Pascal lineup. That said, "least" is relative; it’s still quite the performer, easily outclassing the GeForce GTX 980M, the fastest graphics chip that was previously offered in the Predator 15. If you want more power still, this refreshed Predator 15 is also offered with the more powerful GeForce GTX 1070 for a few hundred bucks more.

The Acer Predator 15 we're reviewing (specifically, SKU G9-593-72VT) is the entry-level model, though you might not think that when you're spending $1,699. For that MSRP, you're getting a 1080p IPS, screen-smoothing G-Sync display with Nvidia G-Sync support, an Intel Core i7-6700HQ quad-core processor, Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD/1TB hard drive storage combo. We’ve seen Acer already discounting this model in its online store below that MSRP; it was listing at $1,499 there when we wrote this.

That’s probably fair, because the Predator 15 at this price point is about as much as we’d comfortably consider spending for a GTX 1060-based laptop. The competing Gigabyte P55W offers the same specs for $100 less than our Predator 15’s MSRP, minus the G-Sync display. At the time of this writing, we also configured an Alienware 15 with the same specs for $1,599, though adding a two-year warranty to match the Acer bumped it to $1,849.

In all fairness, buying decisions go beyond specs alone. As we’ll soon see, the Predator 15 offers an abundance of gamer-friendly features and qualities that are well worth extra consideration, setting this system apart from the hordes of similarly configured competition.

Design

Sometimes looks are deceiving, but not in the case of the Predator 15. This gaming notebook looks every bit as aggressive as any of its competition.

The formidable, edgy exterior is predominantly black, with red accents. The spiky silver Predator logo is positioned in the center of the lid, and repeated under the display. The logo on the back of the lid is lit in red, as are the two stripes flanking either side. The lighting back there is independent of the display backlight, which means it can be switched off when you want to game a little more inconspicuously.

The Predator 15 is about as big and heavy as 15-inch notebooks come. The 15.6-inch chassis width is normal for a notebook with this screen size, but its 11.8-inch depth is about an inch more than expected. And, at 1.5 inches thick, the Predator 15 is downright chunky. Compare its thickness and 8.2 pound weight to the Gigabyte P35X v6, which offers the same class of components as the Predator 15. That Gigabyte laptop is just 5.3 pounds and 0.8 inch thick.

But the Predator 15’s thickness isn’t without advantages. The ample height helps accommodate a great cooling system, a keyboard with plenty of travel, super-sounding speakers, a large battery, and a removable panel on the bottom of the chassis for easy access to some serviceable components. That doesn’t stop us from wishing it were a little slimmer, though.

The Acer’s build material is plastic. Most visible surfaces are covered in a soft-touch material, which is much preferred to plain plastic. It feels good and tends to repel fingerprints.

The chassis strength is good, showing little tendency to flex or bend. The lid has strong support, as well. We like that the display can be opened with just one hand. The display hinge is plenty stiff, and it allows the lid to flex back about 45 degrees past vertical.

The Predator 15 has a full-size keyboard with a number pad. The layout is as close to that of a desktop keyboard as we can remember seeing on any recent notebook. The arrow keys are full-size and divorced out into their own cluster, with three of the four sitting one row below the rest of the keyboard. The number-pad keys are also appreciably full-size, which isn’t something every 15.6-inch notebook with a number pad can claim.

The Chiclet-style keys have a short but precise throw. The tactile action is a bit linear (meaning that there's little variation in feel from the top to the bottom of a keypress), but the feel is good overall. The rock-solid keyboard deck also helps the overall feel of the typing experience.

The Predator 15 lacks per-key RGB backlighting, but so do its competitors at this price point. The keyboard instead has four color-changeable lighting zones, each of which can be set to any color in the RGB spectrum. The zones can be individually turned off, as well. This is done in the pre-installed PredatorSense software, shown below.

Above the left side of the keyboard are the Predator 15’s five dedicated gaming macro keys. The “P” key is color-coded to indicate which of the three available profiles is active. The macro keys are always red, but what’s neat is that only ones with an active assignment illuminate.

Macro configuration is also done in the PredatorSense software. The editor is basic but usable. The software allows you to make an unlimited number of profiles, though only three of them can be active at any given time. It takes little time to switch the profiles in and out, so that limitation isn't a big deal.

The touch pad is another excellent attribute of the Predator 15. It has a practical anti-glare surface, and it's plenty large for the notebook’s 15.6-inch display. The separate left and right buttons have engaging feedback and make minimal noise. Gamers are sure to appreciate the touch pad's on/off button, as they'll likely want to plug in a gaming mouse. When disabled, the red backlighting strip around the touch pad turns off to indicate that state.

Features

The Acer Predator 15 we tested comes with a 1080p IPS display. This is an ideal resolution for a 15.6-inch panel, as Windows scaling isn’t needed to increase the text size (to our eyes, at least). It’s also ideally suited to the GTX 1060 graphics card. In our gaming benchmarks, the laptop had no trouble putting up plentiful frames per second (fps) in the latest titles at this resolution, generally in excess of 60fps.

We have zilch to complain about in terms of the display’s picture quality. The colors are vibrant, with excellent contrast. There’s plenty of brightness for most any situation, even limited outdoor use, and the display’s matte surface does a good job of keeping reflections at bay. Touch-input support isn’t available on the Predator 15, but that’s not a feature we generally look for on a gaming notebook.

What we do look for is screen-smoothing Nvidia G-Sync support, and the Predator 15 has it. That wasn’t true on the first-generation Predator 15 we reviewed, so it’s nice to see Acer listened and made improvements. G-Sync may not be all that important for this system right now, as its GTX 1060 is capable of delivering more than 60fps in the latest titles, and the screen's refresh rate tops out at 60Hz. But as games get more demanding in 2017 and beyond, G-Sync will be a handy feature, keeping performance smooth even as frame rates dip lower.

The Acer Predator 15 has two front-facing speakers, plus a subwoofer on its underside. To our ears, it would be a challenge to find a more impressive set of speakers on a 15.6-inch notebook. Those here get exceptionally loud and pump out a respectable amount of bass. As a matter of fact, the loudness at half volume is better than maximum volume on a typical notebook of this size. We noticed no distortion even at top volume.

The left edge of the laptop holds the AC power jack, a pair of ordinary USB 3.0 ports, separate microphone and headphone jacks, a full-size SD card reader, and the optical drive bay.

A DVD burner came in our review unit, but the optical drive is a swappable module. A switch on the bottom of the chassis both unlocks and ejects it. Included with our Predator 15 is the Predator "FrostCore," a fan module designed by Cooler Master. Acer says it can reduce the processor and graphics card temperature by up to 5 percent. We did test this, and we'll talk more about it shortly, in the benchmarking section.

Predator Gaming Backpack

Acer sent its Predator backpack with our review unit. Not included in the Predator 15’s MSRP, the backpack is $149.99 as an accessory. Given the weight of the Predator 15, a backpack is the best way to carry it, unless you're only going from one room to another.

The backpack fits either the Predator 15 or the Predator 17. There’s a padded sleeve inside the main compartment for the notebook itself. Our Predator 15 review unit fit securely, with little wiggle room. The 17 would likely stretch the bag a bit.

A dedicated compartment on the bottom of the backpack is meant for the power adapter. We like this separation, as it prevents having to deal with all the cables in the main compartment. Speaking of which, there’s plenty of room in the main compartment for accessories such as a mouse, a small keyboard, and a headset.

The backpack itself weighs 3.5 pounds empty. That's not exactly light, but even with the Predator 15 and its power adapter inside, it didn’t feel like much of a load. The nicely padded shoulder straps and ventilated back panel were comfortable. Once we tightened up the straps, the whole bundle fit snug against our back with a minimal amount of play.

Acer says it put a waterproof coating on the top of the backpack, the bottom, and all zippers. We didn’t exactly feel comfortable testing that, but we do like the idea, as the last thing you want is to get stuck in the rain and then stuck with a dead laptop.

The backpack’s materials feel high-quality, with consistent stitching. The carry handle on top of the backpack feels strong and durable. And with the Predator 15 inside, the backpack stands up on its own.

The backpack is pricey, but it's worth considering if you plan to carry around a Predator or a similarly sized notebook on a regular basis.

Components

The Acer Predator 15 as we're reviewing it here has more than enough muscle to power through today's games at 1080p. Most of the credit for that goes to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 "Pascal" graphics chip, which is also VR-ready. The GeForce GTX 1060 replaced the "Maxwell" GTX 970M in Nvidia's lineup, while the GeForce GTX 1070 replaced the GTX 980M.

The GTX 1060 in the Predator 15 is overclockable via the pre-installed PredatorSense software. Acer doesn’t publish an exact overclock, but in our review unit, the GTX 1060’s core went from 1,405MHz to 1,525MHz when we flipped the PredatorSense software switch, the boost clock jumped from 1,671MHz to 1,791MHz, and the memory ticked up from 2,002MHz to 2,052MHz. (We used the “Turbo” setting in the software.) Those seem like pretty decent bumps, especially the 120Hz jump on the graphics core.

Using the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme benchmark, we observed the graphics sub-score of the Predator 15 increase from 5,472 to 5,714 with the overclocking, a difference just under 5 percent. Not bad for a few mouse clicks.

The Predator 15's processor in all configurations is the familiar Intel "Skylake" Core i7-6700HQ. It has four cores, supports thread-doubling Hyper-Threading, and can Turbo Boost from 2.6GHz to 3.5GHz under the right thermal and power conditions. It's a fast chip, and not even the larger, pricier Acer Predator 17 offers one better. To get the overclockable Core i7-6820HK, you'll have to step up to the pricey Predator 17 X. We don't find the Core i7-6700HQ to be a gaming bottleneck based on our benchmarks, so being "stuck" with it in the Predator 15 isn't exactly a bad thing.

Two of the Predator 15's four DIMM slots were populated in our review unit with 8GB DDR4-2400 modules, for a total of 16GB of dual-channel RAM, which is plenty for gaming. The laptop supports a maximum of 64GB via four 16GB DIMMs. Two of the slots are accessible through the service panel on the bottom of the notebook, shown here...

The panel is held on by two screws, though even after removing them, we had to pry around the edges with our fingernails to remove it. And even after that minor struggle, we weren't sure how to get to the other two DIMM slots. The whole bottom of the chassis didn't want to come off, even after we removed all the visible screws.

Also under the service panel are the Predator 15's 2.5-inch SATA drive bay, and the M.2 Type-2280 (80mm) slot. In our review unit, they're respectively populated with a 1TB 7,200rpm mechanical hard drive and a 256GB SSD. The Windows 10 Home operating system is installed on the SSD, which still has enough space to fit several large games. That's more than we can say about more common 128GB boot SSDs. However, the SSD is a SATA drive; we’d prefer to see a PCI Express/NVMe interface for lightning-quick drives like the Samsung SSD 960 Pro, as the faster standard is becoming more popular, and for good reason. That being said, the SATA drive in our Predator 15 review unit seemed plenty fast to us, and it benchmarked well enough, too.

Thermals

There are two fans in the Predator 15, situated at the rear corners of the chassis, aimed out the back. In an interesting move, the perforated grille centered between the two fans is an intake. The bottom half of the chassis underside is also perforated to serve as an intake.

The fans are inaudible for general tasks, remaining off or running at a very low RPMs. When gaming, the fans develop a slight pitch and some motor noise, but the overall volume doesn't project far. We'd be confident using this notebook in most places while gaming, minus anywhere total silence is required. The fan profiles are well-behaved for normal usage, with the RPMs mostly remaining steady and not ramping up and down all the time.

The most impressive part of the cooling system is how cool it keeps both the chassis and the innards. We enabled the Predator 15's graphics-card overclocking using PredatorSense, and then proceeded to play Rise of the Tomb Raider for 30 minutes. Our GPU-Z logs showed the GTX 1060 maintaining its core and memory clocks, with the former staying very close to its overclocked boost clock. The GPU topped out at just 60 degrees C, when we routinely see gaming notebooks exceeding 80 and sometimes hitting 90. The Core i7-6700HQ processor peaked at 80 degrees C, an acceptable temperature that’s a bit lower than normal, too.

The temperatures on the outside of the notebook were impressively low. The center of the keyboard reached just 81 degrees F during our gaming session. The warmest point was around the power button, just 87 degrees F. Even the underside of the chassis remained cool all over, actually a bit cooler than the top, after we averaged all the temperature points. The warmest was 87 degrees F at the upper left. We don’t recall testing another gaming notebook that ran this cool on the outside. The Predator 15’s chassis thickness is most certainly a help when it comes to cooling.

As noted earlier, the Predator 15 comes with the Predator “FrostCore,” a removable fan unit that swaps into the optical drive bay. Acer says this unit can further reduce the processor and graphics card temperatures by up to 5 percent. But we did another 30-minute gaming session with the FrostCore installed, and found no variance in the component temperatures based on our logging. The outside surfaces of the notebook showed no real variance in temperature, either.

We like the idea of the FrostCore, though at least in our testing, it didn’t improve the already excellent cooling performance. We’re sure it didn’t hurt, though.